Archive for the wrap up Category
BASKETBALL SITTING HIGH
The basketball team beat East Carolina this past Saturday afternoon, 79-66. Sophomore Jerai Grant finally had his showing out, scoring a career high 14 points in an otherwise pedestrian effort by the rest of the team. It was pretty obvious that it was a half-hearted effort as Booker and Sykes were out rebounded and we didn’t hardly block any shots. We were 14/21 on free throws. Look for rankings later today. We’ll update as soon as they come out.
***UPDATE*** The ESPN/USA Today Coaches’ poll was just released, and Clemson is sitting pretty at #11.
SCHEDULES
If you haven’t already seen it, we’ve put together comprehensive schedules for baseball, basketball, and football here at Block-C. The schedules posted stretch from 2006 to next years football schedule. Just click the “Schedules” tab underneath the header image. We’ve found that it works great on cell phones as you usually spend a while trying to find them otherwise.
DAWKINS STILL A FORCE
The New York Times published this article on Brian Dawkins and his leadership that has helped the Eagles run roughshod over the Cowboys in Week 17 and overcome the Adrian Peterson led Vikings in the first round of the playoffs yesterday. The seven time pro-bowler and Clemson alum is only getting tougher as the years progress.
COACH SWAP/AXE IMMINENT FOR TIGERS?
According to this article in the Charleston P&C, Steele has been stated to be taking the defensive coordinator position after his fall out with Nick Saban at Bammer in yet another printed media news outlet. It also pegs Woody McCorvey as the new possible top choice for the offensive coordinator position but we’re gonna have to drop an assistant somewhere. At this point, it’d be wise to keep Napier from a recruiting stand point but who gets the axe? McCorvey has taken that position at Mississisissisisp[sppii State and Alabama in years past but was rather unimpressive at both schools in the role.
JAGS MIGHT BE OUT AT BOSTON COLLEGE
Eagles head coach Jeff Jagodzinski has been warned by the university that if he even interviews for the Jets job, he’s going to get the boot. This is important to us Tiger fans because we’re using our recruiting as the bandages to nurse our bowl game wounds. Tahj Boyd, four star quarterback out of Virginia, has received late, hard pushes by us and BC and according to many. He was going to be choosing between us and BC for his final official visit.
***UPDATE*** Jags is going ahead with the interview as per ESPN Radio, so we’ll see.
POSSIBLE COMMITMENT TODAY
Dabo Swinney travels to Delaware today to have an in-home visit with one of his top targets, 4-star DE Leon Mackey of Hargrave Prep. Mackey was reportedly very high on Clemson since his December visit and a teammate of his, current Clemson commit Jonathan Meeks, said that when he spoke to Mackey Sunday night he said he was going to commit to the Tigers.
***UPDATE*** Mackey committed per TI and CUTigers.
Chili: I’m going to get a few positives out of the way before I go into RAGE mode. Clemson’s defense, for the most part (the most part being any down but third), played well. It’s tough to play to top potential when the other team is getting away with holding and blocks in the back all day. Clemson’s fans represented the school well and came out in droves. I liked the way Coach Swinney handled the loss in his post-game presser. I am particularly proud of the super drunk Clemson fan 5 rows behind me and Willy Mac who, when everything got quiet towards the end of the national anthem, screamed out NINETEEEEEEN EIIIGHTEEEEEE OOOOOOOOOOONE!!!! Godspeed to you, champion.
Okay, negatives. Cullen Harper. I’m not going to go too far in terms of personally attacking a guy who has given a lot of time and effort to Clemson, but I will say I am not sad to see him finish his Clemson career. The piss poor offensive line play by some individuals made it a lot harder for him to execute, but there’s no excuse for his continued lack of ability to throw the ball away, find open receivers, or stay in the pocket. The sack on 2nd down at the end of the game pretty much summed up his play all year. Again, the offensive line play was horrendous. They couldn’t open up holes for our runningbacks, who likely just played their last games in Clemson uniforms. James Davis couldn’t have been sent out on a more sour note. Play calling left a lot to be desired. Whether this is the result of not having a whole season to devise an offensive scheme or not having enough time to deprogram Rob Spence’s scheme, I’m not sure. It seems to me that Clemson needs to go out and get an offensive coordinator. Clemson, as it was in many games this year, was the more talented team, offensive line aside. I’m reserving judgment on Dabo, but I see that a lot of Clemson faithful have already started bitching and moaning about him.
I saw Cullen Harper at the buffet in the Omni after the game, and he was eying the tortellini the entire time. JUST LOOK AT THE SALAD. JUST LOOK OVER, IT’S RIGHT THERE, THERE’S NOBODY COVERING THE SALAD. FUCK. He then tentatively scooped some jambalaya in his plate and then crumpled to the ground when a waiter brushed too close to them. Never let go of his plate though.
Willy Mac: To be honest, both lines looked like shit. No performance, however, looked worse than Bobby Hutchinson. At the beginning of the year when they asked him to come back he should have just said, “Look guys, I’m flattered but I couldn’t block a five year old if I had to.” Seriously, his game plan must have been to snap the ball then shrivel back two steps and get lit up. The funniest part about him is that at the hotel last night he just sat on the sofa in the lobby with his dumb little wrinkled button down shirt and dumb undersized tie like a kid waiting for his mommy to come pick him up. Seriously, he must have sat there all night like he was in time out.
I echo all of Chili’s sentiments, but would like to build on his referee comments. That one play, you know the one where we ran a fumble back for a TD, the ball carrier was more than likely down. But the replay didn’t show any where close to enough evidence to overturn the fumble. That was a terrible, hack job by those guys.
I’m also disappointed in our running game. Early on we started feeding the backs and they chewed up yards. But we had that drive where we were stopped three straight times and punted and our coaches gave up on the run completely. WE WERE AHEAD BY TEN POINTS AND MADE A DEFENSIVE STOP AFTER THE PUNT. You don’t give up on the running game when you know you can have success and when you have a QB that bad. That’s what you get when you have someone as young as Napier calling the plays. I would love to have us keep him around in a demoted role because of his recruiting, but our next move needs to be to find an offensive coordinator, like Chili said. Although, with the way Utah is stomping on Alabama’s nuts on national television right now it worries me about Steele, but this is largely uncharacteristic. (Turn’s out Steele’s not calling the plays, but maybe he should.) My positives: Cullen Harper is gone; Bobby Hutchinson is gone; The game ended; The opposing fans didn’t spit on me; It’s Friday; At least we’re not South Carolina fans; Lastly, the tailgaiting was pretty damn good, so I still won at the end of the day.
Here’s the CUAD presser with the box score, notes, etc. Also, congrats to Chili for the Mac Cup win. He got his prize today.
BASKETBALL KEEPS CRUISING ON THE COMPETITION
Miami jumped out to a 12 point lead last night but made a few key mistakes and that’s all it too for our basketball squad to cock slap the Hurricanes across the face by a score of 91-72. KC Rivers had 28 points and Terrence Oglesby added another 17 in the points party. Miami coach Frank Haith commented afterwards that, “Obviously, that was a butt-whuppin. Those guys gave it to us. They were tougher than we were.”
BOWL PRACTICE NO WALK IN THE PARK
Coach Swinney seems to have our guys turned geared up during practice. Check out this video on it. From reports that we’ve been getting all over, the practices seem fast paced, extremely physical, and high in spirit.
“KNOW YOUR…” IS UP AT BIG RED
Big Red network finally got around to posting our end of last week’s “Know Your…” segment. We won’t be doing a second segment due to time constraints and not wanting to force questions. Instead, expect a comprehensive “Know Your Jacksonville” segment.
FRESHMAN ALL-HUMMERRICANS (SP?)
Mason Cloy and Brandon Maye have made the rounds on a few Freshman All-American lists. DaQuan Bowers picked up some honorable mention rep as well. I guess we have Tommy Bowden and his recruiting staff to thank… so… Thanks Dabo.
DAVIS CLOSING IN
James Davis is thinking about the team first and winning before all his personal stuff. It can be echoed at this point that James Davis is one of the best representatives Clemson football has had in quite a while. He needs 112 yards of rushing to beat Raymond Priester’s all time rushing record at Clemson. He needs just two touchdowns to surpass Travis Zacharcy on the all time touchdowns list.
A look at the numbers by year (as per his ESPN page):
- Freshman Year: 879 yards rushing, 9 TDs. 19 receptions for 152 yards.
- Sophomore Year: 1187 yards rushing, 17 TDs. 6 receptions for 115 yards.
- Junior Year: 1064 yards rushing, 10 TDs. 12 receptions for 51 yards, 2 TDs.
- Senior Year: 725 yards rushing, 11 TDs. 14 receptions for 123 yards.
- Total: 3,855 yards rushing, 47 TDs. 51 receptions for 441 yards, 2 TDs.
Clemson pulled off a come-from-behind win over Liberty bringing our overall record up to 9-0. From the way we played today, the record definitely doesn’t show it.
Our team was out of it throughout much of the game. Purnell put it best: “Well that was a walk in the park. I have a lot of admiration for their team. They played yesterday and still had a lot of heart and energy. It was a struggle for us to win this game. We were not in sync defensively and we didn’t wear them down. Their 3’s got us on our heels.” After nine games a team should be expected to have the rust knocked off and have their stamina back up to par. It seems that we’ve gotten back into the habit of not making many errors but we were winded all game long and our players were just not paying attention.
Perhaps our team thought that Liberty would be tired as they had played a game yesterday. Perhaps our team overlooked a very good Big South team. Perhaps our team was unaccustomed to running full court with a team that was playing five guards at once. Whatever it was, you’ve got to feel a little better knowing that at least we can get up for games like Illinois, but in the same breath it’s also frightening to think that we have trouble taking care of business at home against a lesser team. We trailed for most of the entire game and if it wasn’t for a burst in the last five minutes the game would have ended poorly.
Some stats to chew on:
- Overall, Clemson is still at 68.3% in the free throw category. To lead a good run in the ACC regular season we’re going to need to up that number to at least 72%. On a good note, we went 8/10 from the gimme line.
- We are a little over 40% on the year for three-point shots. Outstanding, marine. I think we’ve found something we can bank on to get us out of trouble for the rest of the year. Oglesby went 4/12 tonight and KC Rivers went 4/8 on the night.
- In the blocked shots category we are averaging 7.7 a game putting us in first place in the ACC.
- KC Rivers had a season high of 32 points today. He might just be able to somewhat fill the gap that Cliff Hammonds left this year.
- Seth Curry, little brother of Davidson stand-out Stephen Curry, absolutely destroyed us. He went 6/9 beyond the arc and had a total of 24 points. As a freshman he’s an unbelievable player and hard to stop, but letting him drive right to the basket and leaving him wide open on three-pointers doesn’t help things much.
- Our big men avoided the paint like it was the plague. We didn’t rebound the ball very well. We also did a piss poor job of rebounding and being physical with a far smaller team.
Here are some more pictures that Willy Mac took at the game:
